Review: Everything Must Go, Barbican Centre

Written for Culture Wars

Everything Must Go (or the Voluntary Attempt to Overcome Unnecessary Objects) was initially intended as Kristin Fredricksson’s celebration of her elderly father, Karl Fredricksson. At its end, after archival home-video footage and photographic slide-shows, father would join daughter on the stage, put on a blue dress, orange wig and red lipstick, and dance with her. Sadly, that’s no longer possible, since Karl Fredricksson died of pancreatic cancer on the 2nd June 2009. They had performed the piece together three times.

What was celebratory, albeit also somewhat anticipatory, has become commemorative. It retains some of the uplifting qualities, but the overwhelming sense is one of absence. The problem, however – and I don’t wish to deny Fredricksson her loss, by any means – is that the passage of time has changed Everything Must Go. Where, in August of last year, it must have felt charged with bravery, honesty and defiance, now, almost a year on, it feels overly nostalgic and incapable of moving on. (Not, of course, that Fredricksson should have to; just that the work has lost its immediacy and, with it, its forcefulness.) It has become merely personal, even to the point of coming across as self-indulgent.

To me – and I should, at this point, admit to being in a minority that remained seated at her curtain call – Fredricksson has created the mixed-media equivalent of a ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ mug.

That’s not to say that her father doesn’t merit the commemoration. He is/was an extraordinary specimen, seemingly intent on playfulness to the last. Videos of him trotting around the garden in high-heels and minks or developing facial dance routines demonstrate a boundless enthusiasm for miniature exploration. Photographs of him dressed and posing as invented characters – which later clutter the stage as cardboard cut-outs – show a keen interest in the subversion of identity. He was, undoubtedly, an artist; albeit one content playing to a reflected audience of one. His actions have a sense of filling time and entertaining oneself; the action being more important than its product or documentation. The emphasis is on discovery over dissemination.

If there is a nagging feeling of self-indulgence, it’s not because this ragbag eulogy is not deserved or fitting, but because Kristen Fredricksson is overkeen to eulogise. She repeatedly makes it clear how much she looked up to him, how interesting she found him, how much she loved and worshipped him. Only the story, however harsh this might seem, is not about her, but him. Simplicity would serve it far better: I kept wishing she’d just tell me about her dad or let the archive material speak for itself. Instead, however, Fredricksson builds routines out of his eccentricities, scattering them with punchlines and physical comedy. Accordingly, there’s a prescriptiveness that points our reaction rather than allowing us to react freely. We’re asked to chuckle at this and sigh at that. Nowhere is it more obvious than in her choice of music – particularly when she overlays Avro Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel on a video of them dancing together onstage at an earlier performance. It becomes so emotionally manipulative that we see through the manipulation and it fails. Were it less obvious in its intended outcome, there could be no failure, only responses, but Fredricksson is intent on raising lumps in our throats and drawing tears.

The same problem of effects too directly sought scuppers her performance, particularly her clowning, which falls far short of her father's. Where he played, perhaps pointlessly, she seems too aware of our presence and her ridiculousness. Everything is cut short, rather than committed. (In itself, there’s something interesting about the quality of approximation and the impossibility of recreating the impulsivity of truly playful activity onstage, but I suspect that to be an unintentional side-effect.)

In all of this, I never once thought of my own father and his increasing age. Without that leap towards universality, Everything Must Go doesn’t earn its own title. It becomes an examination of a loss, of Kristin Fredricksson’s loss, but (and again I’ll admit to feeling mean-spirited) never loss itself.